I have a problem. Good food. I love to cook, bake, eat and I love to share great food with friends. But sadly, food does not love me. I am allergic to nearly everything. Grains, dairy, yeast, some fruits, some nuts, eggs....if it's creamy, baked, or delicious then I shouldn't eat it. But I do eat it. It starts off small, a splash of cream in my coffee, a little cookie here or there. Surely this tiny drop in my nutrition bucket won't make a problem. Only thing is, it does. It makes a big problem. Because before I know what hit me, I've eaten 3 cupcakes and that little splash of cream in my coffee has become a peanut buster parfait from Dairy Queen and now I'm filled with regret and pain.
Life is filled with choices, tiny choices. Tiny choices that make huge differences in our life.
Sin looks a lot like food allergies. Like food that I'm allergic too, sin is poison to the soul. Although small amounts of poison may not kill you, ingest that poison day after day and see where it leads you, it will lead you to death. My doctor once told me, as I whined about having to say no to what I want to eat, that the food I'm eating is poison to my body. You may think you're not affected by a little bit here and there, but those bits and pieces will catch up with you and in the end. They will kill you. Not quickly, but death is at the end of that road.
We who are Christ followers, have died to sin. The moment we surrendered our life to Christ we sacrificed our life in order to live forever in relationship with Christ. We died with Christ, so that we can live with him! (Rom 6) We have a knowledge that the world doesn't understand. We know that choosing sin will kill us, eternally. And yet with that knowledge, having experienced the freedom that came at our moment of salvation with Jesus Christ, we consistently choose to live in sin. At the beginning of my diagnosis, I stuck to the plan, and my symptoms dissipated over time. Saying no to what my flesh desired was the cure to my symptoms. As I got used to my new found symptom free life, I began to forget how trapped I was by my old ailments, and I began to cheat. As we live out our faith, we begin to forget how trapped we were by our sinful life before Christ. We begin to negotiate our sin. A little bit here, a tiny sin there, we know it's wrong but we just WANT to do it our way! Before you know it your old symptoms are creeping back in under the surface. Greed, lust, a stubbornness to be right, you've become less and less content with the way things are and more and more demanding that things start going YOUR way.
If your reading this and getting uncomfortable, take heart. There is hope, and that hope is the Great Healer. I've struggled with my willingness to give up the foods I love in order to let my body heal. I've whined, I've begged for healing, I've prayed that God would magically take away all my food issues. All the while there God has been asking me to surrender. It's hard to surrender when you're holding tightly to your personal desires. A conversation with my Mom really hit me hard. I was whining about how sick I felt and that my symptoms are returning. I KNEW that I needed to give up sugar and go all out on the diet my doctor had suggested. I knew that if I did, my symptoms would disappear. But I didn't want to. It's TOO hard! I cried to my mom, I don't WANT to give up the foods I like! She understood, but asked me a question. "Erin, do you think that after all God has brought you through and healed in you. Just maybe Satan wants to keep you believing that you can't give up sugar?" I had never thought about God and Satan in the realm of my physical allergies. As many of us tend to do, I compartmentalized my spiritual life and my physical life. But you really can't separate them, they are one. I began to think about that and ask God if there was any truth there. It was clear to see that wherever my flesh is demanding and unyielding, something is happening spiritually as well. So once again, here I am, asking God to do something about these allergies. I'm asking him to let me give them up.
You probably don't have food issues, but I'd be willing to bet that there is something in your life that you are holding on to with a grip that would challenge the strongest man in the world. Maybe God wants you to just let it go. Maybe, like me, you've forgotten what it was like to be free from the symptoms of your life before Christ. You're a Christian but you've let your life be marked with bits of sin that have began to infest your life. You can't remember the freedom that came when you gave your life to Christ. To you I say, come home. Your Christian walk is work, salvation is free, but living out your faith comes with a great cost. The cost is to give up your stubborn desires and unyielding heart and let God's grace give you the supernatural strength to conquer the desires of your flesh.
I hope that you are encouraged as well as challenged by what you read here. I pray that as you read this that you would feel God's gentle pleading. Come home. Let it Go. Surrender your physical and spiritual sickness at the feet of the Great Healer. He loves to heal, after all He didn't come to save the found, and heal the well. No, Christ came to save the lost, heal the broken, free the captives!
If you need prayer, or if you have been encouraged or challenged I'd love to hear from you! Leave me a comment in the comments section, I'd be happy to pray for you.
Blessings,
Erin
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